


Abnormal Family Units

by AndreaLyn



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-27
Updated: 2013-12-28
Packaged: 2018-01-02 20:17:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1061162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaLyn/pseuds/AndreaLyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fitz and Simmons discover that not all 0-8-4's are quite as dangerous as they seem; in fact, some are entirely more dangerous than they ever considered. After all, a baby sharing their genetics assembled like an IKEA bookshelf can't be good news, can it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Simmons.”

She hears the voice through a cloud, as if it’s muffled by an incredible set of dampeners and she really must remember to tell Agent Coulson about protecting the walls between rooms a bit better. Again, her name comes, and again, and Simmons struggles to locate the source. She’s groggy and hazy and doesn’t feel like waking up. Monday morning are always so difficult, really.

“Simmons, come on,” comes that voice again. “You have to wake up. We need to get out of here.”

“What do we do with the 0-8-4?”

Simmons struggles to work past the veil of grogginess, but when she opens her eyes, all that she sees is Fitz on a table next to her, bound and restrained. There are tubes and IVs running over his body and when she gets a good look at herself, she finds she’s much the same. There’s a startled scream stuck in her throat and she tries to struggle, but even that is subdued by whatever it is they’re pumping into her system.

“Simmons!” That’s Grant above her, May working on getting Fitz loose. So what’s the 0-8-4? What are they talking about?

Fitz is awake too, now, and Simmons watches him reach out towards the wall. “Don’t forget the inc...you have to bring it, don’t leave it, don’t...” Simmons watches him, every muscle and bone and joint in her body aching furiously and her head is a swimming mess. She doesn’t know what’s happened.

The last thing she remembers is going out into the field because they had needed her and Fitz to assess the scientific capabilities of a consortium of scientific and medical doctors working underneath the governments’ radars. They had managed to get inside, but then everything had gone black, as if someone had hit her over the back of her head. “Fitz,” Simmons ekes out, reaching her fingers out to him.

He reaches back, grasping at her fingertips before the weight of holding her arm out grows too weary. She hurts _everywhere_ , like someone has taken a spatula and carved her from the inside out. Why would someone make pancakes out of her? That’s what she wants to know. She cries out when her veins feel like they’re on fire, but then she’s gone from the table to big, strong arms. 

“Coulson,” May says firmly. “Get the incubator.”

The _what_?

Simmons stares at Fitz uselessly, wondering why on earth he’d want them to take that, but she can’t form words, can barely form thoughts. The pain grows worse as Ward moves her around and she lets out one last pained exhalation before the blackness overtakes her and she gives in to the unconscious state beckoning her closer.

And the dreams are grey and empty, frightening and filled with nightmares. They make her want to scream, but when she wakes up, the scream isn’t coming from her.

It’s Fitz. It’s Fitz screaming, clambering up from the medical bed and trying to get to the device. He wants to be closer to that incubator and she doesn’t know why. “How long were we gone?” Simmons asks, fighting past the dryness in her mouth to ask. It sounds croaky, like she can’t speak without things falling apart.

“May says it was over a month,” Fitz replies, running his fingers slowly over the outside of the incubator, as if lovingly stroking it. “You spent a lot of it unconscious. What they did to us,” he says, glancing over at her with a pained look on his face. “What they did to _you_ , Jemma,” he breathes out. “I’m glad Ward and May did what they did.”

She doesn’t want to know what it is they did, but her imagination seems well-equipped to supply her with an endless number of possibilities.

“Fitz,” she says, struggling to sit up and get a better look at what he’s poking at. “What is that?”

“I think it’s why they took us,” he says, something dark lurking around his eyes. He looks exhausted, poor thing, and if he feels half as worn as Simmons does, then she has no idea how he’s on his feet. “It’s not the first thing I ever would have thought, but I suppose if you were a mad scientist with no real basis in how the world ought to work, you might look at two geniuses like us and think, oh, right, them, that’s the perfect gene pool I want to dive into,” he rambles, pacing around the incubator.

Jemma hasn’t got a clue what he’s talking about and only half of that is thanks to how rapidly he’s speaking.

“Fitz,” she gets out. “What is it?” she asks again.

“Congratulations, Jem,” Fitz replies wryly. “You’re a Mum.”

Simmons really would like to protest that the shock of said news isn’t what made her black out (that it was the physical pain or some other environmental factor), but quite honestly between being rescued and being given a bombshell like that, she’s fairly sure she passed out thanks to the sheer incredulity of the situation.

The next time she wakes, Fitz is holding her hand, sitting in a wheelchair. 

The incubator looms in the corner of the room like another body.

“I just had the wildest dream,” Simmons gets out, feeling croaky and unstable.

“That you and I have a science test tube baby together and it’s in the corner of the room?” Fitz asks. “Because if so, then nope, sorry, not a dream. I’ve named her.”

“Her?”

“She was a collection of cells a few days ago, but they’ve induced some kind of rapid growth and the baby’s already at term. There’s no bellybutton though,” Fitz keeps talking despite the horrified look on Simmons’ face. He doesn’t seem to understand that she doesn’t want to process this by discussing the scientific anomalies of a strange test tube baby because all she can focus on is the fact that in the corner of the room is a child that she and Fitz had together, even if it wasn’t in any traditional way. “She’s adorable, though. Got your nose, I think.” He scratches his own. “For the best, really, your nose is more attractive.”

“Fitz,” she eked out mildly, worried about the fact that mad scientists had apparently pooled their genes to create a child. She didn’t want to begin to think of the terrible purpose they could use it for. Perhaps Fitz was right. Perhaps science was the best thing to cling to in these circumstances. “What’s the growth rate?”

“Approximately one month per three hours,” Fitz says, drifting over as if there was a magnet drawing Fitz to their baby.

Their baby.

 _Their baby_.

She and Fitz had a baby. “I think I might pass out again,” she confesses, but she struggles to sit up, getting vertical in time to watch Fitz take out the bundle of supposed joy from the incubator and hold the tiny girl in his arms. “I’m not ready to be a mother. I’m barely even old enough to be an adult. There are still moments when I think I need mature supervision, certainly when I nearly blow something up in the lab.” And oh, look, she’s rambling now, too. Apparently this is a shared trait.

Oh god, it’s a family trait.

She reaches out to grasp the wheelchair (which she supposes he’d brought for her) and signals for Fitz with a wiggle of her fingers and a point before he sets the baby down and comes back to get her. “I need to see her.”

“Sarah Jane.”

“What?” Simmons asks, shaking her head. 

“I named her Sarah Jane, after our favourite classic companion,” he says proudly. “I hope you don’t mind?”

She minds that mad scientists kidnapped them and made a baby that’s going to grow on an accelerated timeline. That’s what she minds. The name isn’t really even the first thing to pop into her head, if she’s completely honest. He helps her get into the wheelchair and gently glides her over to where the baby is kicking its’ tiny little feet with all its’ tiny little toes and it doesn’t _look_ mangled or strange. In fact, the tuft of auburn hair at the top of her tiny little (really, okay, Simmons, she tells herself, everything on the child is tiny and little) head.

The trouble is this:

“Oh, Fitz, she’s perfect,” she ekes out. “A perfect little science experiment. Have you run any tests yet?”

He shakes his head. “I can’t bring myself to do it. Every time I run a scan, I feel oddly guilty about the fact that I’m scanning my non-child.”

“I’ll draw blood,” Simmons says, though her smile is feeble and unsure as she stares at the child in the mock-crib they’ve made up for her. “What if I make her cry? What if she hates me? What if her cells contain some sort of harmful component related to her accelerated growth and she dies? Fitz, what if she keeps growing at an accelerated rate and there’s no stop?” she asks, her tone getting panicked.

The baby must pick up on some of that wariness because out of nowhere, little Sarah Jane FitzSimmons starts to cry.

“Oh, no,” Simmons says with a wince. “I’ve set off the alarm, haven’t I? I don’t suppose she has a snooze button?”

Fitz grins at her in this silly way that makes him look five years younger than he already is and this _boy_ who smiles at her gives her the most awful fluttering in her chest that might have already begun given the fact they’re co-raising a child together now until the baby is either taken from them as a dangerous object or they figure out some way to make this work because having a baby on a plane filled with people like Ward and May is no way to raise a child.

“Do you want to hold her? I think it’s well past time she met Mum.”

Simmons opens her mouth to say that they shouldn’t get attached, but it’s far too late. Fitz has placed the baby securely in her arms and all protests quickly fly out the window the very moment Simmons gets a good look at the child in her arms.

“Hello there, Sarah Jane,” Simmons greets brightly, rocking her in smooth, curved patterns to encourage a calming motion. “I’m Simmons.”

“Mum,” Fitz corrects.

“ _Simmons_ ,” she reiterates with a roll of her eyes. “Given that due to your accelerated growth rate, there’s a high likelihood that in a matter of a week, we’ll be the same age and you can’t wander around calling me ‘Mum’, that’d be crazy,” she scoffs. “We’re going to take an eensy tiny bit of blood from your little arm and then we’ll see what makes you up!” Simmons proclaims in a high-pitched voice.

Sarah Jane seems to enjoy it, though, given her bubbly laughter and the way she smacks her fists against Simmons’ shoulders.

Oh dear.

She’s started to give the baby a name in her head. “Isn’t she the most perfect thing you’ve ever seen?” Fitz asks, marvelling over Simmons’ shoulder at the baby. “And I bet she’s intelligent. You and I having kids? There’s no way that kind of genius doesn’t pass on.” Simmons bites her tongue, knowing this is hardly the time to talk about recessive genes, and focuses on rocking Sarah Jane in her arms. “Coulson’s called it in with the Hub. We’re waiting on orders, but there’s already an unspoken agreement.”

“And what’s that?” she asks.

“No one touches our baby,” Fitz says, a dark look on his face that would make a stranger believe that he was capable of cruel and terrible things.

The funny thing is, he’s making Simmons believe it, too.


	2. Chapter 2

Simmons still feels like she’s suffering a case of extreme whiplash. One moment she’d been kidnapped, harvested for eggs, and the next (well, not precisely next, but next enough), she’s sitting with a two-year-old in her lap while Fitz leans over and braids her hair into symmetrical pigtails while the adults have a discussion about the fact that SHIELD wants to bring her in.

“We don’t know anything about her,” Ward argues.

“Are you serious?” Skye protests. “Look at her and tell me that isn’t FitzSimmons’ kid to a T.”

Of course they’d think that what with Fitz and Simmons sitting so close and Sarah Jane reading a children’s book on theoretical physics (which is actually just Fitz’s normal book on physics, but he’d drawn in little bears to explain the theorems, which she finds oddly adorable). 

Simmons is still struggling with the disconnect of _what happened_ and _what’s become of it_ and isn’t exactly feeling entirely like Mummy, but she does still have a protective urge to keep her close. She thinks it’s tied innately to the fact that Fitz really is taking this to heart. They bunk together to be closer to Sarah Jane, sing her lullabyes together, and when they were falling asleep last night, she’d overheard him mumbling something about this being a dream he never thought would happen.

“No matter how she came into our lives, I can’t stand by and let men in black suits take away this child,” Simmons says, glancing warily at Ward and Coulson. “Your black suits aren’t inherently evil like those lurking at the Hub. No offense?”

“I like to think mine is more of a glistening grey,” Coulson says with a smile. “What can you tell from the diagnostics you’ve run on the test.”

“Sarah Jane,” Fitz says sharply.

“What?” Ward asks.

“Her name is Sarah Jane Fitz-Simmons,” he counters, lifting his chin like he’s ready to spoil for a battle, which would look a bit more daunting if his hands weren’t full of thick hair waiting to be braided. “She’s not a _test_.”

Simmons doesn’t think now is the time to argue semantics given that their child is a test from some rather dubious scientists who are probably looking to combine their intelligence scores in a child. They also probably thought they’d be able to provide the nurturing aspects that would lead their child towards helping them out.

“Okay, her name is Sarah Jane,” Coulson cuts in before things can get too heated. “She’s very cute now, but what happens when the puppy grows up? Are we going to have a security problem?”

Sarah Jane looks up, a wild look shared between Fitz and Simmons and her little fingers tighten in Simmons’ shirt. “Mummy?” she whispers. Simmons might have been a mother for only a few short hours, but there’s no mistaking the fear in her small voice.

Fitz reaches over and strokes his hand over her hair, kissing her temple firmly. “Don’t you worry, kiddo,” he says, his false bravado convincing enough for Simmons and she hopes it’s enough for their child. “You’re not going anywhere.” He lifts his chin to Coulson. “Because if she does, we go with her.”

It’s always been a ‘we’ thing with them. Simmons forgets what it’s like in a time before it was she and Fitz together as a combined unit. They’ve been a ‘we’ since the early days of the Academy and they’ve only grown more fused together with time.

“If she becomes a security risk, just remember she’s _yours_ ,” is Ward’s last word on the subject.

It might be a stalemate, but Simmons is taking this as a win.

“Who wants ice cream?” she asks jubilantly.

“Me!” Fitz and Sarah Jane exclaim in tandem, hands rising in the air in abject excitement.

Simmons feels as if every ounce of her has become buoyant because she feels like she could float away with happiness. The worry and the fear and the panic bleed out until there’s nothing left but the joy of watching Fitz lift Sarah Jane into his arms and give her such a look of fatherly adoration and concern. 

In that moment, he’s never been more beautiful.

She manages a shaky smile and tries to put aside her sudden epiphany as to how much she enjoys looking at a mature Fitz and thinks about the ice cream choices they have in the fridge. “Peanut butter ripple for all, then,” she says and nods her head. “Come along, FitzSimmons’ of all shapes!”

***

It’s three in the morning and Fitz is awake.

Let him repeat that. It’s three in the _freakin’_ morning and he has been awoken by his demon child (now of four years old) staring at him with less than an inch between her face and his. “Oh, Jesus!” he yelps, trying to put some distance between them and ending up smacking Jemma’s cheek in the process. She lets out a discordant whine, curling in on herself. Fitz breathes steadily and tries not to associate nightmare monsters with their daughter.

“Sweetpea, why are you awake?” he asks.

“Aunt Skye made me think about a something,” Sarah Jane says, narrowing her brown eyes with the kind of scientific determination that he usually sees Jemma apply to her experiments. He feels as if he ought to fear for them if she’s looking at them like that.

Fitz grabs his pillow and hugs it to his chest, wiggling to make room for Sarah Jane between the two of them. “What did your lovely Aunt Skye say, now?”

“She said that it was nice that you and Mummy are taking care of me, but that it’s sad you didn’t get to have a family the normal way.”

Fitz opens and closes his mouth, gaping in shock. “She said that to you?”

Sarah Jane shrugs, curling up tightly to Fitz’s side. “Not ‘xactly,” she mumbles. “She was talking to the pilot lady.”

“And where were you?”

“I’m little and they didn’t see me because I was playing with Mummy’s mice!” Fitz gives her a look that tells her she ought to feel a bit worse about eavesdropping and he’s not sure whether they’ve taught her to read their body language and facial expressions or whether she’s picked up on a bit of the telepathic link, but she immediately deflates. “I shouldn’t have listened,” she admits quickly. “But how come they were sad? You have me! You’re Daddy and Mummy, you’re my parents.”

“In a manner of speaking, yes,” he says, reaching over her little head to start poking Jemma awake. This is not a conversation he can do on his own.

“Fitz,” Jemma exhales. “What’s going on?”

“Our daughter wants to know why it’s sad this is how we’ve started our family,” he gets out in a high-pitched panic. “Wake _up_!”

“Okay, fine, I’m up,” she breathes out, shifting to her side so she can peer at the both of them. She reaches out to brush the loose curls of Sarah Jane’s hair. “Sarah Jane, your father and I are happy to have you and we’re very close, but he and I are only friends.”

“But...your textbook has lots of diagrams...”

“You’re our little miracle,” Simmons says warmly, catching Fitz’s gaze above her head. “And we wouldn’t trade you for anything in the world, but he...I...” She takes in a sharp little breath. “He likes other people and I have my work!” she says brightly, mustering up a smile that convinces Sarah just fine.

Fitz, however, is not so easily appeased.

It takes another thirty minutes for Sarah Jane to get back to sleep, but he waits it out patiently. It’s only when he’s absolutely sure that she’s out that he pokes Jemma’s shoulder.

“Ow!” she complains. “What?”

“I like other people?” he echoes, shaking his head with heavy confusion. “What are you talking about?”

“Your crush on Skye! I’m fairly sure once Sarah Jane ages a little bit more, she will notice,” Simmons replies, eyes wide. “I thought it would be better if we didn’t lie to her. The last thing we need is for her trust to be compromised.” 

She turns over to go back to sleep, which is a shame because Fitz had a very long, very in-depth argument about how he hasn’t liked Skye in that manner since the second week she joined the team. While her breasts continue to be a very nice thing to look at, Fitz has moved on because he’s figured out that when you’re looking for a companion, you need to look at more than the physical aspects.

You need to look for the other half to your whole.

Your Simmons to your Fitz.

He shakes that thought from his mind and bunks down to get comfortable for the night. There’s no sense in arguing this when there’s a small child between them who’s growing up to be too curious for her own good. Fitz doesn’t exactly sleep well that night and he utterly blames it on the fact that now he’s obsessing over how to tell Simmons that he doesn’t like Skye like that.

In the end, he enlists Sarah Jane’s help.

“Okay, so, you know what you’re supposed to do?” he asks, briefing her while the rest of the Bus sits down for morning breakfast as cooked by Ward (who knew the man had a little bit of culinary talent in those murderous pinkies of his?)

She nods and folds the note in her hands one more time, making that crease the most precise thing he’s ever seen. “I hand the note to Mummy and make sure I stick around so she can’t smack you.”

“Good girl,” Fitz says distractedly, giving her a gentle push in Jemma’s direction.

His heart is beating madly in his chest as he watches Sarah Jane deliver the note over, propping herself up in Jemma’s lap as they read the note together. Fitz doesn’t dare move, doesn’t want to even give up an inch because he doesn’t trust his unsteady feet not to give out from under him at this point.

The note is as simple as it gets. In fact, a third-grader might send a similar note to one of his crushes.

It reads: 

_I like you, Jemma. Not Skye, not Coulson or May, not Ward (sometimes Ward), but you. I like you in more ways than you know and all the ways science has discovered and all the ways we’re still looking for. So, do you like me back? Check yes or no._

She looks over his way and even though he’s standing completely still, there’s a moment where he thinks he might trip.

She waves at him with a flirty little smile and when it comes time to wave back, Fitz loses all ability to move the muscles and joints in his fingers, probably looking like he’s strangling thin air with his hand.

“Smooth,” Ward deadpans as he passes with a pan of eggs.

“Oh, I’d like to see you do better,” he retorts scathingly, realising what he’s said when it’s out of his mouth. “Actually, no,” he says, chasing after Ward and the eggs. “No, don’t try, let’s not see you try, let’s not.”

“Don’t worry,” Ward says. “You’ve got a family together now. I’m not going there.”

Now if only Fitz could get Simmons to check that ‘yes’ box.


	3. Chapter 3

“Mummy!”

“Oh, goodness, she’s shrill,” Simmons remarks as she stares down at the scrabble tiles on the board in front of her. She and Fitz have only just settled down to play a game (which had originally been a serious talk, but the tension boiled too heavy and high and so she’d fished out Scrabble). Except that now, their now-eight year old is screaming at her from the other end of the plane.

Fitz stares at the board like a man about to go to war. “I swear I don’t have any banshees on my side of the family. You?”

“No banshees, though there was Aunt Carol, who was purported to be a bit of a siren,” she jokes. “Sarah Jane,” she calls out sternly. “If you have something to say, come and deliver the message in person!”

She runs in, as if she’s been running up and down the length of the Bus and she’s wheezing. 

Turns out, she has asthma. Who knew a test tube baby could develop issues? Really, Simmons would’ve thought that if they were aiming to create perfection in human form, they would’ve weeded out all the little bits and bobs of wrongness. Still, Simmons thinks she’s absolutely perfect and she hands over the inhaler so Sarah Jane can take a deep pull.

“I heard Agent Coulson and Pilot May talking,” she rambles, her unique mix of accents (mangled between Simmons and Fitz’s, both) making the words short and almost curving towards the imperceptible. “They say we’re landing. They say there’s a checkpoint and they’re going to board us and find me!”

“Sarah Jane, eavesdropping?” Simmons tuts, disappointed to cover up the fear that’s practically flooding her at this moment. 

She crawls her way in between them, one hand lightly holding onto Fitz’s sleeve while she crosses the other over and pulls on the hem of Simmons’ shirt. Her need for physical contact isn’t necessarily new, but Simmons isn’t sure she wants to break their child of it. After all, who knows when she’ll stop wanting to be so close? And there will come a day in which they’re the same age and things get intensively awkward.

Fitz and Simmons exchange a wordless look and whatever romantic tension or unspoken conversations might have lingered between them now vanish in the face of their child in danger.

“You hide her, then come with me,” he says, his worried gaze flashing between Simmons and Sarah Jane. “They’re not letting this happen, not without hearing an earful from me.”

Simmons takes great pains to ease Sarah Jane into the little cubby safe they’ve put together – alarmed, locked, and protected by some of the thickest steel on the plane. She’s on the smaller side, their daughter, so she tucks herself in easily with a book and a bottle of water, smiling serenely up at Simmons. “Love you, Mummy,” she whispers as Simmons eases the cushioned cover down and returns the area to looking like nothing more than a couch.

She shares a panicked look with Fitz and nods her head. “Maybe it’s nothing,” she gets out, not quite believing her own words. “Maybe it’s all a big misunderstanding.”

Fitz doesn’t look like he’ll be so easily swayed and Simmons tries to ignore the frisson of base delight that sends shivers down her spine at Fitz looking so ruggedly paternal and protective. She reaches forward and gently brushes her fingertips against his, turning a loose fumble for a hold into an actual grip as they move through the corridors of the plane.

By the time they reach the cockpit, Fitz has drawn Simmons up and they’re sharing personal space.

“You can’t let them take away our daughter,” he spits out. 

“Certainly not for whatever horrific tests they’re bound to put her through!” Simmons adds.

“And if you do let them at her, I can guarantee that the lot of you won’t like what we have in store for you...”

“...because it won’t be pretty,” Simmons finishes Fitz’s sentence, even though she only has a vague glimmer of a notion of what he means. Still, between the two of them, they can likely think up a dozen ways to make anyone cringe in fear – even someone as unflinching as May. She lifts her chin, ready to stand her ground as long as she must.

And Coulson and May seem to want to let them stew and simmer.

“Should I tell them or do you want the honors?” Coulson asks.

“What?” Simmons asks, lost now.

“We informed head office that we already dropped off your experiment and are submitting the paperwork. Unfortunately, they’ll experience a mild glitch when they receive it. You can thank Skye for that,” May says with a deferred nod of respect. “They won’t be able to track where she’s gone as it’s filed under a high classification and asking would be extremely embarrassing for everyone involved.”

It’s a bit of whiplash going from the belief that you’re working with a large number of traitors to wanting to kiss each and every one of them, but Simmons is currently experiencing that in spades. She’s not sure how to thank them for keeping their Sarah Jane safe, but that elation is cut short when she remembers that they’ve tucked her away in a limited oxygen space.

“Sarah,” Simmons ekes out, kissing Fitz on the cheek for the whole bunch (it will have to do) before she takes off running as quickly as she can, practically bouncing with the glee that trust in your fellow comrades brings.

Her sprint through the plane feels like the fastest she’s ever run and it’s difficult for Simmons to believe that only days ago, she had been approaching the child with a sort of cordial distance to prevent herself from getting too close.

As she hauls Sarah Jane up from the hiding spot and into a tight embrace, those fleeting doubts and fears are gone. All she can do is give in to the overwhelming tsunami of emotions threatening to tear her down.

Fitz eventually catches up to them, just as Sarah Jane begins squeaking about the need to breathe.

“Mummy,” Sarah Jane protests. “I can’t breathe.”

“Sorry, darling,” Simmons says, easing her to the ground. “How about you go visit Aunt Skye and see if she has any games for you to play.”

She waits until Sarah Jane has gone off to subtly wipe away the tears on her cheeks, fallen from the fear of losing her child. She knows the way Fitz is looking at her means he has something damning he wants to say, but between the angry emotions of near-loss and the flutter of her feelings for Fitz, she’s not in the mood.

“Fine,” Simmons says quietly. “You were right. Mummy and Daddy,” she says.

“She couldn’t find a better Mum if she tried,” Fitz assures, taking a tentative step closer. “So....about that conversation....”

“Can we have dinner for it?” Simmons suggests before they get into it. “I’d really like any awkward pauses to be accompanied by choice of wine or food. I’ll cook something you like. Maybe my famous lasagna?”

“With your secret tomato sauce?” Fitz asks, eyes twinkling brighter.

“The very one,” she agrees.

“Dinner it is!”

*

“I can’t look,” protests Simmons, who has Fitz covering her eyes for her to avoid staring at the trainwreck that is Skye teaching their daughter about push-up bras, low-cut dresses, and discussing Ward’s bottom. “Oh, Fitz, did we really bring this upon ourselves? I thought we were doing a wonderful job raising her to be conscientious and thoughtful and...”

The words ‘like you could bounce a quarter off it’ drift their way and Fitz tightens his hands over her eyes.

“It’s madness,” announces Fitz, sounding scattered. “Clearly she’s turned sixteen and parasites have invaded her brain. It’s the only explanation.” 

They’re supposed to be getting ready for their big dinner, though Simmons has nearly finished all the cooking save for the garlicking of the bread. Those plans have gone slightly off the rails considering they now have to deal with a teenager and the talks you’re supposed to give to her. Simmons is feeling a bit frantic and panicky because she’s barely even had this conversation herself and now she has to talk to Sarah Jane about it?

Heaven knows she’s likely to start blabbering and it’ll turn into a true disaster.

“I don’t suppose there’s someone we could bribe to give her the sex talk?” she muses.

“Do you really want Skye or Ward giving our daughter sexual advice?” Fitz retorts, his eyes wide and his voice so high-strung that it might snap. “I realize she’ll be an adult within the next few days, but that’s not a scar I want her to have to heal from.”

“We can hear you, you know,” Skye says evenly, glancing up from her nail polish. “Sound carries in this thing, remember?”

Fitz and Simmons awkwardly wave at the both of them and Simmons feels more embarrassed than the time one of her older classmates had publicly posted about her crush when she’d been eight and about to graduate freshman year of high school. She feels as if that feeling isn’t going to abate through the night because she and Fitz are meant to be talking about their _feelings_ and what their future looks like.

Most people don’t skip the dating and the marriage to get to the baby, but at least they have cohabitation to fall back on?

It’s silly, but it’s enough to make Simmons feel a tiny bit better about the whole thing.

Sarah Jane, in particular, doesn’t look very impressed about any of this.

“You can’t tell me what to do,” she accuses them. “You can barely talk about your own feelings, can’t say that you love each other even though you tell me all the time when you think I’m sleeping, but I’m not,” she insists, even going so far as to stamping her foot to truly emphasize her point. “And I’m sick of it!” She glances at them warily, after that, like she’s now anticipating that she’s in trouble.

Fitz opens his mouth as if to yell, but Simmons is the one who rests a hand on his arm and glances at him warily.

“She’s right, you know,” she gets out. “About me, and you, and my emotions towards you.” She wrings her fingers, wishing that the sheer awkwardness of this speech would go away before it threatens to consume her whole. “It’s not like you and I have had the easiest of times. I don’t think being abducted and mined for parts is anyone’s idea of a good first date.”

“Nor is jumping off the back of an airplane,” Fitz says evenly, old bitterness still lurking in his words. 

Sarah Jane lets out a quiet squeak of a sound and yes, oh, that’s right, neither of them have told her yet. Well, apparently now is the time to let secrets loose. Simmons glances over at her and for a moment, she’s struck by how familiar the young woman standing there looks. She doesn’t have the glasses that Simmons had needed at that age before her laser surgery and she stands far straighter than Fitz ever did at the Academy, but that’s them, right there, from Leo’s nose to Simmons’ hair, to the way her lips are pinched like when there’s a problem afoot.

“So I’m taking mini-FitzSimmons Grant-watching,” Skye cuts through the awkward silence with an arm around Sarah Jane’s shoulders, steering her off in another direction. “And the two of you should get back to that romantic dinner of yours before things get cold or your daughter suddenly becomes an adult with more maturity than the both of you combined.” She flashes a bright smile. “Okay? Okay! We’re all on board the Skye Plan!”

And then they’re gone and there’s no buffer left.

It’s Jemma, Leo, and everything between them.

And they’ve got all night.


	4. Chapter 4

They’ve been staring at the blood sample for what feels like ages, but at some point, they might actually have to discuss what it means. For Jemma’s part, she really doesn’t want to, but they’re quickly running out of time. Whatever has been helping Sarah Jane to age rapidly has started to kick into high gear. She’s twenty-three now and shows no signs of slowing down.

“Fitz,” Simmons asks when she stares at the sample again and can’t see anything different. “What do we do?”

If the ageing continues at this rate, Sarah Jane only has a matter of days left before she...before she...Simmons can’t even think about it. She closes her eyes tightly and sinks down onto her stool. It’s the first time she’s felt so deflated and this has been a trying experience from the start. She’d never asked to be taken and then sudden parenthood had been thrust on her and Fitz and it’s something that no one should have to get used to.

And in the middle of all this, she’s wanted to tell Fitz how very much he means to her, but their child might be dying and that has to be more important.

“I don’t know,” Fitz confesses.

There’s one idea lurking in the back of Simmons’ mind, but it’s horrid and terrible and she feels guilty every time it creeps back up away from potential and into possibility. “Maybe we could create some sort of genetic stopper? It could force her to stop ageing.”

“It might cause her to stop her body from creating what she needs to survive,” Fitz replies and Simmons already knows this. If they try to stop her from growing, then they might stop her body from doing what it has to. Besides that, they might not have enough time to put a solution into action before their child suddenly becomes old enough to be their grandparent.

And that’s the crux of it. 

It’s enough to make Simmons dredge out her idea and let it see the light of day. “There is one thing we could do.”

Fitz perks up from where he’s leaning his elbow on the table. There’s a frenzied look in his eyes, as though he’s willing to do anything at this point. “What?” he demands. “What is it?”

“We stop her. Cryogenically,” Simmons says, guiltily glancing to where Sarah Jane is sparring with Ward, her long limbs and her mature face making her almost unrecognizable if not for the familial traits evident in every feature. She can see Fitz in the way she smiles and in the curl and bounce of her hair. Sarah Jane has Simmons’ hair and her nose and soon, they’ll be on equal ground. “If we freeze her at the Hub, we’ll have more time to find a solution and she has a chance at a real life or even just a chance to adjust to suddenly being an adult even though she was only born a week ago!”

“Freeze her away like she’s some sort of meat cutlets we haven’t got to this week?”

Simmons cringes when he puts it like that. It’s not the best solution, but she doesn’t think it’s the worst, either. “Or watch her grow old and possibly die right in front of us?” she points out the alternative. “None of this is any good, Fitz, apart from...” She hadn’t been quick enough to stop that from getting out, but now that she’s said it, she knows she has to finish it. “Apart from giving me a glimpse into a future we could possibly have.”

Fitz looks up at her with the faintest degree of hope in his eyes. 

“You’re not shutting the door on the two of us, then, after the whole kidnapping and harvesting our genetics for a science baby?” 

“I think between the two of us, we can surpass anything,” she says. 

It’s a lie, is the trouble. After all, the two of them can’t figure out how to save their daughter in time to save their life and now they’re hedging their bets to do the best they can with the limited time they have left. She wishes that they could be good enough to do something else, but they’re not and they can’t.

Fitz glances over to Sarah Jane, exhaling with such weight that it sounds as if he’s trying to shake loose all his fears and worries. “Do you think she’ll agree to this?”

“I didn’t know we were planning to ask,” Simmons says, her voice small and somewhat guilty. After all, she had been looking to take the coward’s way out. It would be so much easier to kiss her on the forehead tonight before bed and in the morning, she’d be...

She’d be...

Well, she’d be safe. That’s what counts the most. Still, she knows that honesty is a very important trait and virtue and they should probably attempt to be good parents by at least asking Sarah Jane if she wants to be saved. Simmons is terrified, though, that the answer is going to be ‘no’.

Simmons feels completely out of sorts. She reaches across the room to where Fitz is sitting and grabs his hand to hold in hers, closing her eyes tightly as she brushes her lips against the knuckles of his hand. Right now what she needs more than anything else is to indulge in this very simple affection with someone she loves very much.

And that’s when it strikes her.

She hasn’t told him. She hasn’t been communicating very well lately about anything. She’d been about to relegate Sarah Jane to an icy nap without a word and she had thought Fitz would just _know_ she loved him, just like he knows about everything else between them. It causes a lump in her throat as she considers all the terrible things that might have happened in that horrible lab they’d been kidnapped to. 

Sitting here, alive, hadn’t been a guarantee.

“Fitz,” she says, twisting his hand in hers as she stares at his fingerprints rather than look at _him_. Simmons licks her lips, as if that will help to coax the truth out any quicker. It doesn’t seem to be doing the trick. “There’s something I want to say, before we ask Sarah Jane about the cryogenics, before everything in our lives changes again...”

She looks up when she feels the soft pressure of a squeeze. Fitz is looking at her and waiting so patiently, giving her every opportunity to say what she wants to say.

She doesn’t know why she’s so _scared_. She ought to fear death, she ought to be scared of the things that go bump in the night, but instead she’s worried about what Fitz is going to say after she bares her heart to him. 

“I love you,” she says, soft to keep the confession between them. “I have for so long. You’ve always been there, by my side, and I took it for granted. I don’t think I realized how very much I love you until you were nearly taken away and...”

And it had pulled at her, as if a hundred knives had stuck her to match her grief. 

“I wanted this, but I wanted it later,” she explains, hating the reed of wariness in her voice. She feels terrible feeling ungrateful, but she wanted this to be their decision and their choice somewhere down the line after they decided to give things a real go. “I wanted to date, first. I wanted to experience all the fledgling and wild things a new couple should. And maybe, maybe if it all worked out, then we could have taken the next step. I love her, Fitz, I really do, but I wanted this to be our choice.”

“Jemma, I know,” Fitz replies. “And I love you right back,” he says swiftly. “I might not be sure what I want out of life or when I want kids or even if, but I bloody well know I want you at my side no matter what comes of it.”

Simmons takes solace in knowing that no matter what they do today, she’s going to have Fitz at the end of it.

“Time to have the talk?”

“This is definitely _not_ the talk I had in mind when I thought of a child of yours and mine. I thought it’d be more along the lines of ‘don’t blow anything up in Daddy’s study, dearest’ or ‘cutting into cadavers is only Mummy’s hobby’, but here we are,” Fitz deadpans, shaking his head.

Simmons takes in a deep breath and prepares herself.

What’s the worst that could happen, after all?

***

“Oh my god,” Simmons says again, watching as Fitz rubs the red part of his cheek where Sarah Jane had struck him. “That went _so much worse_ than I thought possible!” The end result of their tense conversation has yielded an agreement to the plan, but not without a firm slap in Fitz’s face, a horrible slew of profanities shouted at the both of them, and no small amount of tears from all of them.

She gently presses the ice pack to Fitz’s face, looking to where Coulson is giving Sarah Jane a bit of a pep talk.

“Do you think she’ll ever forgive us?” Fitz wonders. “Do you think we’ll find a cure and be able to bring her out of the ice-box we’re putting her in?”

Simmons has been thinking about it ever since she brought up the idea in the first place. In her head, they manage to find a cure and bring her out of it when they’ve grown up a little and have figured things out. Perhaps they’re in their forties when they do it and Fitz is starting to get a touch of grey mixed in with his curls and she’s calmed down a tad. Maybe they’ve figured things out and they’ve gotten it together. Perhaps they’ve even retired.

It’s all a mess of possibility, though. None of it is what’s actually going to happen.

The truth is too cold and stark to think about, though. It’s a clinical reality that they’ll bring their daughter to a laboratory and they will put her in stasis to prevent a much worse fate.

They are going to place their daughter in cryogenic stasis and hope they can find a cure. There is no certainty. There are no guarantees. There is only hope.

“Are you feeling any better?” she asks gently.

“Are you?” he snaps back at her.

“Of course not,” Simmons nearly bursts with the indignity of it all. “How could I feel good about any of this?” In less than an hour, they’ll be at the laboratory and that will be the end of their daughter in their lives. She’s been with them for such a short time and now she’s going to be gone again and Simmons is going to have to say goodbye and she really doesn’t know how she’s going to do it.

Thank god for Fitz.

They sit there in silence while Simmons ices Fitz’s cheek, the moments ticking by faster than they have any right to. She hardly even hears May announce they’ve reached their destination, but there’s no mistaking it when Sarah Jane turns up in their doorway, head hung low with those auburn curls of hers falling into her face.

Simmons reaches out, ready to fix it as she did when Sarah Jane was young and needed the help, but right before their eyes she’s become an adult and will keep going unless they do something about it. 

“I’m sorry, Dad,” Sarah Jane says quietly to Fitz. “I know you’re only doing this to save me, but...”

“But none of it is fair,” Fitz finishes for her. “We know.”

“I want...” Sarah Jane takes in a shuddering breath, as if she’s going to cry any instant now and if she does that, then Simmons is going to fall in line and do the same. “I want to say goodbye here. Agent Coulson and Ward say they’ll accompany me, but I don’t know that I can do this if I get there and have to leave both of you. I don’t think I could and I know I have to.” There are tears shining in her eyes and Simmons’ world starts to go bleary.

She’s halfway out of her seat when Fitz reaches over to keep her down. “No,” Simmons ekes out, the word almost sobbed out. “No, we’ll come with you, we’ll...”

“Mum,” Sarah Jane chides gently. “Please. You came up with this idea and if it’s going to work, then I have to go willingly and I don’t know if I can do that with the both of you there. You’re the best parents I’ve ever known and I know my experience is somewhat off-kilter to kids my age, but I don’t care,” she says stubbornly, crossing the distance and sweeping Simmons into a firm embrace. “You’re the best,” she reiterates, pressing her lips to Simmons’ temple and not stepping back for an instant. She leans over for Fitz, not quite letting go of Simmons and soon they’re in a three way hug as they spend their last moments together.

Simmons feels the space as soon as Sarah Jane slides away, stepping back to where Ward is waiting for her in the doorway.

“Grant,” Fitz calls out, face contorting in such a way that means he’s trying not to cry (Simmons knows his faces very well). “You take care of my daughter.”

“I wouldn’t dream of anything but,” Ward promises, a hand on the small of Sarah Jane’s back. “Are you ready?” he asks quietly.

She nods, never once taking her eyes off of Simmons and Fitz, not until she’s well out of the Bus and out of their lives for the time being. The whole time, Simmons can’t bring herself to accept what’s really happening because reality makes her heart ache with more fierceness than she’s ever experienced before. 

She turns to Fitz and the floodgates let loose. Without meaning to, she sinks forward, the weight of her grief breaking her as she collapses into Fitz’s waiting arms – who seems every bit as needy for the contact as she does. They stay that way until her arms ache for the position they’re in and when she eases back, her eyes sting because she’s been crying for too long. 

Sniffling, she wipes away at the remaining moisture and reaches out to brush away the lingering tears on Fitz’s cheek.

“We’ll bring her back,” Simmons promises.

“Or we’re not FitzSimmons,” he agrees, sliding his fingers over her neck to bring her in closer again

This time, it’s not for comfort. She has enough time to realize that Fitz wants to kiss her before she’s kissing back, hands on his chest as if ready to push him away, but she wants this and wants him and those hands end up tugging on the fabric to bring him closer with a small whimper. Simmons eases back tentatively, licking her lower lip and keeping her gaze on Fitz’s lips in the shadows between their bodies.

How are they going to go on with their lives after this?

Simmons supposes that the answer is ‘very, very carefully’.

“We should have dinner sometime,” Fitz says quietly. “When the both of us have moved on from grieving. When we...when we live like normal people again.”

“I’d like that,” Simmons replies quietly.

One day, they will be able to do this.

One day.


	5. Epilogue

“Do you think she’ll recognize us?” Simmons asks warily. “It has been almost twelve years.”

“She’s frozen cryogenically, dear,” Fitz distractedly replies, fiddling with a keyboard in front of him, fingers flying away at a hundred strokes a minute, if not a few more. He reaches over and grins, tweaking the nose of the three-year-old child in Simmons’ arms. “Isn’t that right, Amelia?” he teases their second-born. 

This one, they’d done the normal way.

None of this ‘be kidnapped and used as kindling for a mad science project’. No, they’d been almost boring with the getting married first, then having a baby. To be fair, they did almost die a few times in the middle and there was that one incident that had made Fitz wary that their child might have picked up a few chimpanzee genetics.

“If everything goes to plan,” Fitz says, gnawing on his lower lip, “She will wake up in time to get a tiny little pinch in the arm to stop her ageing problems and it’ll be as if she’s just blinked.”

“As if she’s just blinked and we’ve aged twelve years and had a baby and been married,” Simmons corrects.

“As if she’s just blinked,” Fitz stubbornly reiterates. He takes a deep breath before he punches in the last three digits required to start the thawing process and looks over to Simmons and Amelia. “Ready?”

“Oh, not at all,” Simmons exhales, her words practically fluttering. “But it’s not like that’s ever stopped us.” 

Three digits take no time at all and the process of moving Sarah Jane from cryogenically frozen to thawed out and Amelia strains in Simmons’ arms to the point that Simmons sets her down on the ground, letting her run forward to press her face up against the side of the machine, peering up in wonder as Sarah Jane gains a pink back in her cheeks and takes her first breath back among the world of the living.

“That’s our girl,” Simmons breathes out fondly, practically pinning Sarah Jane back into the chamber with the hug. She only got there first because Fitz is being _responsible_ in putting away the equipment they’d needed to do this, but he gets there soon enough. 

Fitz gestures for Amelia to join in by widening his eyes and flicking his fingers towards the family. “Come along,” he whispers. “Into the family hug with you!”

“Dad!” whines Amelia and Sarah Jane in tandem.

“Like nothing changed,” Simmons admits, her laughter soft and entirely grateful. “Thank you,” she whispers to Fitz above the heads of the children and for her gratitude, all that Fitz wants to do is hug her even tighter.

They’ve got their family back and that’s all he needs.


End file.
